Gary Kamiya writes for Salon that in banning torture and ordering the closure of Guantanamo last week,
"Obama emphatically rejected Bush's warped vision of America, and
announced the return of the confident, principled country we all
believed in, and too cavalierly took for granted. With a few strokes of
the pen, he began to erase the ugly ethos that dishonored us for eight
years, and called upon us to stand for a braver, better America. An
America that will not abandon its moral principles at the first
setback. An America that knows its real power lies not in its mighty
army but in its mightier ideals.

"The miasma of repressed fear
that has hung over America for so long will not dissipate overnight.
Right-wing pundits are shrieking that we must keep torturing to keep
America safe, and claiming that if Guantánamo detainees are moved into
ordinary prisons, America's cities will be the targets of terrorist
attacks. These boogeymen have been effective for years, and they will
not instantly disappear. But since Obama's repudiation of Bush's
hide-under-the-bed-and-shoot ethos, the country already feels more like
the home of the brave and less like a land of furtive torturers. . . .

"Bush
confronted evil with evil. He tortured, lied and flouted the law. By so
doing, he deserted posts more vital than any front-line position: He
abandoned the Constitution, he fled from the moral law. And we all,
collectively, let him do it."

According to a new Rasmussen survey,
"44% of Democratic voters believe President Bush and senior members of
his administration are guilty of war crimes. Only 28% of the nation's
Democrats disagree. . . .

"Overall, among all voters, 25% believe war crimes were committed while 54% disagree."

Ross K. Baker,
writing in a USA Today opinion piece, says people should let it go: "In
this season of reconciliation and hope that we can rise above the
corrosive polarization of recent years, a chorus of angry voices has
pressed aggressively for criminal charges to be brought against former
president George W. Bush, former vice president Dick Cheney and members
of the intelligence community thought guilty of constitutional
violations or of practicing or sanctioning torture.

"A few lonely
politicians, some television talking heads and the vitriolic chorus of
the blogosphere seek revenge against an administration with which they
did not happen to agree on much of anything. This 'movement,' if one
could call it that, makes a mockery of the spirit of generosity and
compassion to which President Obama is dedicated."

Washington Post opinion columnist Richard Cohen
cites "the very different country called Sept. 11, 2001" and writes
that "certain people are demanding that the torturers and their
enablers be dragged across the time border and brought to justice."

He
argues, however, that "we have to be respectful of those who were in
that Sept. 11 frame of mind, who thought they were saving lives -- and
maybe were -- and who, in any case, were doing what the nation and its
leaders wanted."

He endorses a proposal by David Cole
of Georgetown Law School: "Writing in the Jan. 15 New York Review of
Books, he proposed that either the president or Congress appoint a
blue-ribbon commission, arm it with subpoena power, and turn it loose
to find out what went wrong, what (if anything) went right and to
report not only to Congress but to us."